It’s not the politics, it’s the Latin and Greek. For someone returning to Paris after years away, what is striking about France is not the ambition of a president who compares his role to that of the king of the gods — nothing peculiarly French there in the age of Donald Trump — but the delightful persistence of classical history and mythology in public discourse. Emmanuel Macron’s early belief in a “Jupiterian” presidency for contemporary France is one example.
After Mr Macron tried to reconnect with voters in a “great national debate” this year to defuse the anti-government gilets jaunes protests, the newspaper Le Figaro published a story with a headline about how hard it was for Mr Macron “to be both Caesar and the tribune of the plebs at the same time”. No further explanation needed.
Easy familiarity with the classics is particularly prevalent among politicians — Dominique de Villepin, the former prime minister, liked to quote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus at the drop of a hat — but French financiers and industrialists have no reason to feel left out.